Couples Counselling

Couples Therapy, or Marriage Counselling, or What?

“We’re all a little weird. And life’s a little weird. And then we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutual satisfying weirdness- and call it love…” (R. Fulghum)

What is the difference between couples therapy and couples counselling, marriage counselling, relationship counselling, couples coaching or my preferred term relationship training? Those are different terms for the same thing. You have trouble in your relationship and need help from a neutral person who has seen it all.

Love is an action and not just a feeling, so you do something instead of letting it go with the flow. That is why we look at the actions of both of you and at the dynamics between you as a team. So it is all about dissolving destructive relationship patterns.
Let me give you some examples:

She criticizes and he flees

Mary is a housewife and mother of two, and she concentrates all her energies on her husband Ben coming home at night. She is then very happy to share all her thoughts and feelings with him. He is unnerved. She gets angry at that and starts to criticize him. His reaction: stonewalling and running away from the situation. These dynamics eventually lead to a relationship crisis and should be disrupted.

No sex any more

Or let’s take a look at Sharon and Tom. After eight years of marriage their love life has become nearly non existent. In the beginning of their relationship every whispered word was taken as an invitation to have sex, and now she finds his advances less than inspiring. But she doesn’t speak up and tell him that she has never enjoyed his ecstatic sounds, because doing so after such a long time would be kind of embarrassing. So she gets her joy from food and not from his body. Time to act and to talk.

The need to change the partner

Frank and John are a homosexual couple who love each other dearly. However, they have pretty different personality styles. Frank enjoys going to parties, he loves company and likes to talk a lot. John is rather introverted, he prefers to stay home instead of going out. And if he joins Frank, he would rather stay by himself in a quiet corner. When there are such huge personality differences, tensions are likely to occur.

I see such constellations a lot in my office. If you don’t start talking at an early stage, looking for compromises and develop some understanding, the happy hormones turn into stress hormones and negative emotions disturb the relationship big time. If you have the feeling you can’t get out of the critical mass, an acute crisis or a vicious circle, it is time for a couples therapy, couples counselling, marriage counselling or a relationship training. Feel free to call it whatever you want to call it.

Call me: 030 854 01770 or use the contact form. I am looking forward to hearing from you!